Retelling a story can be a difficult skill and story vines can be a fun and helpful way for students to practice summarizing. Students must plan their story vine, pulling out main events from the story. When explaining their story vines it allows students to practice retelling their story orally.  

A story vine is a long braid or rope decorated to tell a story. They summarize a story by showing/representing key events in a story in sequential order. As someone who loves arts and crafts I find story vines extremely engaging. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story-vines-winnipeg-1.5040107

I found on article on cbc news of a teacher in winnipeg who used story vines to help bring indigenous culture into her classroom. Although story vines are not a traditional indigenous way of passing down knowledge, they align with oral traditions. In the article they Renee McGurry mentions that story vines “actually come from Africa, where they’ve used vines to create stories. She led the recent workshop for about 15 Winnipeg teachers, who got crafty at the community arts space and learned how to create story vines.” 

I think story vines are a super fun and creative way for students to summarize stories. It can be hard for students to learn how to summarize the key points of a story and this is fun and crafty way to practice, other than writing a summary. Story vines would be a great addition at the end of a novel study, especially for younger students, although I believe students of all ages would enjoy this, as I had a blast making mine. 

I made a story vine on the paper bag princess story, by Robert Munsch and this is what it looks like. 

Like I said I had so much fun making this and getting creative with the different materials to summarize a classic story.